


in time of war

by elizajane



Series: Welcoming Silences [63]
Category: Foyle's War, The Bletchley Circle
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, First Time, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-01 23:10:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: A story of how Hilda Pierce and Jean McBrien met, and fell in love.





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kivrin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/gifts).



> This story originated in an email thread with Kivrin and Crowgirl in which we were discussing the lovely "one bed, what do?!" trope and I offered to write them one. I offered up a few couples to choose from and this was the story Kivrin requested. 
> 
> Thank you to Crowgirl for the beta; all remaining infelicities are my own.

“Dr McBrien?” There’s the soft _rap rap rap_ of gloved knuckles on the door jamb to accompany the query and Jean, absorbed in her work, jumps at the crisp voice from the door to her office -- left open so her girls would know she could be interrupted. She looks up to see Hilda Pierce standing in the doorway.

It isn’t as though Jean is unaware that Miss Pierce had arrived at Bletchley that morning. She had seen the car pull up and the tall figure, in her usual tailored wool suit and sensible shoes, step out into the misting rain. Jean had stood, a heartbeat too long, at the window and watched Miss Pierce's retreat into the main house. Had hoped, without expectation, that Miss Pierce might look across the yard and seen Jean standing there. Had hoped that, if she did so, Jean might see some flicker of recognition on Miss Pierce’s face.

These visits from Miss Pierce were often fleeting, closed-door affairs at which Jean’s presence was rarely required. When she had been called in, to explain an algorithm or report on progress made, her part was brief and she was dismissed before the meeting ended. Still -- she recalled, sometimes (in the evening as she performed a brisk toilette in the WC before retiring to her cell of a room) the way Miss Pierce had interrupted Major Shurleff with a crisp “I remember Dr McBrien,” the second time she was introduced. “What do you have for me, McBrien?” ignoring the men sitting at the table beside her. How Miss Pierce had looked at Jean, when she said it, with a slight smile on her lips. Jean didn’t think Miss Pierce was a woman of many smiles.

So Jean had stood at the window that morning, allowing herself to watch Miss Pierce stride across the gravel drive through the rain, until Miss Pierce was ushered inside the main house by the young sergeant on duty. Then, with a soft inward sigh, Jean had returned to her desk. She had assumed this would be the last she would see of Miss Pierce on this particular visit.

Instead, here was Miss Pierce standing before her, a slim briefcase in one gloved hand and the other hand still raised as if she intended to repeat her knock if no answer was forthcoming.

“Miss Pierce,” Jean pushes back her chair and stands. “What a --”she puts a hand to her hair, pushing a few strands away from her face. A nervous habit. _Damn._ “What a pleasure to see you. I wasn't told to expect --”

“No.” There’s that hint of a smile again. Jean feels her cheeks heat and closes her eyes briefly against the flutter of hope that hint brings with it.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting my car to develop mechanical trouble,” Miss Pierce says, turning slightly to survey the room behind her, eyes flickering over Jean's girls bent to their tasks -- as absorbed in their work as Jean had been moments before. She turns back. “Apparently, the repairs require a part that cannot be delivered here until the morning. No other transport is available so I will be remaining here until the morning. The major said room could be made for me in the dormitory?”

Jean does a quick mental inventory of the rooms set aside for the women at Bletchley. Of course, there were staff responsible for the cooking and cleaning, and Major Shurtleff -- with whom Miss Pierce had likely been meeting -- could have summoned Mrs Frederickson the housekeeper to give instructions. But he has a habit of delegating to Jean as if she were responsible for the domestic arrangements. At any other time, Jean would have sent him a crisp reminder that such errands pulled her away from the work she had been hired to oversee. This time, however, she almost forgives him for sending Hilda to stand at her elbow.

“We’ve no private rooms, I’m afraid,” she says. The work Hilda Pierce does is beyond her own classification and Jean has seen the way the woman walks into a room of officers and takes charge; she imagines Miss Pierce’s accommodations in London -- even in wartime -- are more commodious than Bletchley can provide. “But Miss Fletcher has gone to attend to some family matters in York. If you don't mind sharing a room...?”

Miss Pierce waves this concern away. “Of course,” she says. “I quite understand the exigency of the case. I’ve certainly had worse during the air raids.” She looks around the room with the air of someone already moving on from the topic at hand. “Now, is there a desk I might borrow for the afternoon?”

Jean leaves Miss Pierce bent over a sheaf of typewritten reports at her own desk -- only reasonable, she tells herself, as she crosses the yard, since her own office has more privacy than the computers’ room. The rainstorm has blown through leaving puddles of muddy water on the gravel drive. The sun shines down, cold, on trees that look barer every morning. She finds Mrs Frederickson in the kitchen going over the fortnightly menus and supply inventory with Mrs Pritchard, the cook.

“Miss Pierce will be staying the night,” she says. “And I suppose her driver will, too.” Major Shurleff had likely forgotten about the driver.

“Two more mouths to feed,” Cook says. “Right.”

“It’ll be cots in the dormitory, Mrs Frederickson says, already beginning to write herself a note. “I’ll send Sally up with clean linens before tea.”

“Give Miss Pierce my room,” Jean says, hearing her mother’s fastidious sense of hospitality in the words. “I’ll sleep with the girls in the East Wing.” She doesn't pay attention to the shiver of pleasure she feels thinking about Hilda slipping between clean sheets in her own room beneath the eaves. That way foolishness lies. Foolishness and distraction from the task at hand.

She pauses outside the door to her office under the pretext of waiting for Miss Pierce to finish a telephone call before interrupting. She stands beside the partition that separates her office from the main work area and looks over a series of calculations Susan brings to her for review, then answers a question of Millie’s. As she speaks with them Jean is conscious of Miss Pierce watching her through the open door, studying her with a sharp, considering gaze.  
Miss Pierce is sitting in Jean’s desk chair with the telephone to her ear, mostly listening and, occasionally, giving what sound (if the muffled tone is indicative) like firm instructions. She speaks with an decisiveness that Jean finds entirely too seductive. With Miss Pierce’s eyes on her as she speaks into the phone it is an easy thing to imagine that quiet authority deployed in...other contexts. As a woman who has learned the importance of high expectations, Jean appreciates women who expect much from Jean herself, in full confidence that she can deliver.

 _Dr McBrien_ she remembers Miss Pierce saying, without hesitation, their first meeting and every meeting thereafter. Even the major, on occasion, had to be reminded of her credentials; he still seemed faintly affronted that a woman of her age remained unattached to a man whose social standing would have been immediately clear to him, whose place in relation to the major himself would have established Jean’s place in the social hierarchy. Her spinsterhood made her dismissable, her expertise made her indispensable. He was forced to deal with her, yet made his discomfort an obvious part of their every interaction.

Miss Pierce, being an unattached woman herself, appeared to suffer from no such confusion. She treated Jean’s reports with respect, asked the questions Jean anticipated she would ask, and moved on as if Jean's work were ordinary. And that itself is extraordinary.

On the other side of the glass Miss Pierce hangs up the telephone and stands. She has taken off her hat and gloves and Jean notices with appreciation the near bob, the slight wave, the tiny pearl earrings. Miss Pierce crosses to the door and opens it.

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Outside your own office, too.”

Jean shakes her head, even as she feels her cheeks flush. “That’s quite all right, Miss Pierce. The girls keep me busy. If I could just retrieve my reading glasses?”

“Of course,” Miss Pierce, stepping aside. “I was just going to ask someone to point me to the WC?”

Jean points down the hall toward the tiny loo.

“Thank you,” Miss Pierce says as they exchange places, brushing passed one another in the doorway. Jean feels the warmth of Miss Pierce’s bosom against her shoulder and _damn it damn it damn it_ there’s that blush again. Miss Pierce is sure to notice, even if Jean keeps her head down and thinks of other, less enticing things. “Oh, and Dr McBrien?”

Jean turns her head. “Yes?”

“It’s Hilda. Miss Pierce rather makes one feel like a secretary.”

“Ma’am,” Jean responds, reflexively, then, “Hilda, I mean -- yes. And it’s Jean.”

Hilda smiles at that, not a small smile at all, and Jean wonders how many here at Bletchley have felt the warmth of that smile turned upon them. She doesn’t think many. She can’t picture it, for example, directed at the major.

“Jean,” then, Hilda says. “And when do you and the girls usually break for tea? I thought a walk around the grounds might be pleasant. Would you care to join me?”


	2. Act Two

“They recruited you from Aberdeen,” Hilda says, without preamble, as they walk briskly through wet autumn leaves along the perimeter of the estate. The low stone walls are augmented by high fences of barbed wire, the occasional sergeant in uniform pacing out his assigned patrol. The most they ever encounter, Jean suspects, is an errant sheep or rabbit. Yet still, she has grown used to seeing them on her daily walks.  
  
Jean usually finds, that walking clears her head and loosens the knots of insoluble problems. Jean glances out of the corner of her eye at her companion. Is Hilda one of her problems? If so, are there knots here for Jean to loosen and undo? The thought that there might be puts heat in her belly and a shiver of anticipation up her spine.  
  
“You've read my file.” She doesn't pose it as a question, though she attempts to keep her tone light. Her mind presents an image of Hilda standing in an office deep in Whitehall before an open filing cabinet, a folder open in her hands. It should make her feel violated; she has never seen the file herself, though she knows some portion of what it must contain.  
  
She notes with interest that she doesn’t feel the least bit violated.  
  
“You aren't surprised,” Hilda rejoins; another non-question.  
  
“Not particularly,” Jean agrees, pushing her hands into the pockets of her woolen overcoat against the damp that lingers in the air.  
  
“I would ask what a Doctor of Philosophy and Mathematics from Shrewsbury College was doing working in the university library in Aberdeen,” Hilda continues. “But having met you I trust you had your reasons.”  
  
The reasons had been an ailing mother in Peterculter and the realization that Winifred did not return Jean' s affections. She wonders whether that story could be gleaned from the file.  
  
“I have family in Aberdeenshire,” she says instead.  
  
“Father a doctor, mother an artist,” Hilda supplies.  
  
“A medical illustrator,” Jean corrects automatically. “Before she died.”  
  
“I am sorry for your loss,” Hilda says, managing to make the formality sincere. “And you are their only child?”  
  
“Mmm,” Jean acknowledges.  
  
“I as well,” Hilda agrees, with satisfaction.  
  
“Is this a job interview?” Jean asks, feeling her lips curl in amusement. “Have I been recommended for promotion?”   
  
Hilda raises an eyebrow, “Surely you are aware how essential your services are here? Not only your own talents but the confidence you inspire in your girls -- we have saved many lives thanks to you.”  
  
Jean, who has a clear estimation of her own abilities, understands the assessment for the truth that it is: no more, no less. She is so used to empty flattery -- _Such excellent work for a woman_ \-- or outright refusal to believe in the quality of her work that she has no ready response to honest praise.  
  
They reach the top of a small rise and pause, in unspoken agreement, to look out across the open stretch of grass and muddy path before them.  
  
“It isn’t a job interview _now_ ,” Hilda continues, considering the copse of trees across the rolling field, where the path wends its way beneath what’s left of the autumn leaves. At the far corner of the open ground stand a huddle of sheep, come together against the autumn cold. “Not today. Not, in my estimation, for several years to come. But the war will end. And, God willing, our boys will return home to jobs made suddenly available to them.” She casts a sideways glance at Jean. “And then women like you, and I, we will have to look out for one another.”  
  
Jean thinks of her desk in the bibliographic services department at the Queen Mother Library in Aberdeen. Taken, surely, by an eager young graduate whose experience warranted only two-thirds her salary. A salary that, at the start of the war, had barely covered her monthly expenses in a shared flat off the high street.  
  
“I shall keep that in mind,” she says, unsure she speaks with gratitude or irony. She thinks it likely Hilda hears both.  
  
“And what of you?” Jean asks, lightly, as the start down the track along the edge of the field and through the trees back around the north corner of the estate. “You must have your plans, for after the war?”  
  
“There won't be an _after_ ,” Hilda says, matching Jean’s light tone. “Not for those in my department. Even if we survive. Even if the war is fought to a bloody conclusion and we are the victors. There’s Russia waiting in the wings. And China, restive, not far behind.” Jean hears weariness behind the words.  
  
“What would you have done?” She asks on impulse. “If the war had never come?” She thinks about this herself, at times.  
  
“I had planned to be a missionary,” Hilda replies.  
  
Jean is so startled by the answer that she laughs aloud before she can help herself: “A _missionary_!”  
  
It’s Hilda's turn to smile. “My uncle was a missionary in Rhodesia, before the war. I had planned to join him there after I finished my training.”  
  
Jean tries to picture the impeccably dressed Hilda Pierce striding about the African bush preaching to lost souls and finds the image strangely arresting. This is the first entirely surprising piece of information she has been presented by, or about, Hilda and it doesn’t … soften her, precisely, but makes her more approachable. Gives her the dimensions of a fellow human being, one with a history that Jean wishes -- with a growing intensity -- to unwrap and savor like a Christmas orange.  
  
“You never went out, then? To Rhodesia?”  
  
Hilda shakes her head. “I was working in the foreign office as an executive secretary when the war broke out. They knew I could read both French and German, on top of the schoolgirl Latin, so it wasn't long before I was reassigned. If Hitler had waited another six months to invade Poland, I would have been in Salisbury teaching Ndebele children to sing ‘God Save the Queen.’ ”  
  
“I can't see you as a teacher,” Jean admits. Then realizes how rude that sounds. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Hilda laughs outright this time, a bawdy chuckle that Jean immediately wishes to inspire again. “Don’t be. No, you are quite right I would have made a terrible teacher. I was always better with animals than I was with children. Looking back I suppose I imagined more Isak Dinesen than Isabella Alden.”  
  
“Marching about the African plains with a rifle slung over your shoulder, carrying on affairs with dashing American pilots?”  
  
“Mmm,” Hilda agrees, “or Danish baronesses.”  
  
Hilda’s tone is so ... ordinary, as if she were remarking upon the weather. It takes Jean a heartbeat to understand the import of what Hilda has said. When its meaning registers, she stumbles on a clump of grass in the path and Hilda reaches out to catch her elbow, steadying her. Jean feels the touch as if Hilda’s hand had touched bare skin and her cheeks burn with the intimacy.  
  
Hilda doesn’t pull back her hand and Jean doesn’t jerk away.  
  
Jean licks her lips, mouth suddenly dry, and looks up at her walking companion. Hilda is watching her, with the same sharp gaze that Jean first experienced in a room full of top brass. On that day when Hilda had directed every question, every response, deliberately toward Jean. As she had been in that room Jean knows, with certainty, that at this moment she is the subject of Hilda’s full attention.  
  
“I …” She starts, and then stops. Desire makes her wary; she could be imagining too much. She distrusts her hearing, normally quite sharp, and her short-term memory, usually good enough for her to recite back half a dozen telephone numbers without strain. Longing has betrayed her before.  
  
She put her hand up to cover Hilda’s at her elbow. Both of them are wearing gloves against the chill, but the contact is still deliberate, unnecessary touch. The silence becomes even heavier with hope than it had been seconds before. Hilda does not step any closer, but neither does she pull away.  
  
They’re standing under shelter of the oak trees at the corner of the field, the muddy track running into the trees as the tall fencing with its tangles of barbed wire curve sharply to the north. Jean glances over her shoulder, as if they're being watched, but the only creatures in sight besides themselves are the disinterested sheep.  
  
“Yes, I thought you might understand,” Hilda says, quietly. Her voice has a queer note to it, Jean thinks, almost -- but not truly -- a question.  
“I'm glad you didn’t,” Jean blurts out, foolishly. “Run away with a baroness, I mean.”  
  
Hilda smiles, slowly. “As am I,” she says.  
  
For a brief moment, Jean thinks Hilda might lean in and kiss her. They’re standing so close together it would take but an all but imperceptible leaning in. Jean’s weight is already on the balls of her feet, ready to lift herself into Hilda’s embrace as she anticipates the movement. There’s a sudden, strong gust of wind up the field and a flock of crows rises up from the trees. Hilda looks up at the sound, and just as she does Dr Palgrave and one of his assistants -- George? Geoffrey? Jean never can keep them straight -- round the bend in the path, walking in the opposite direction. Jean steps back from Hilda’s hand, saving herself from a painful withdrawal, and shoves her hands back into her pockets.  
  
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Dr Palgrave says, touching his fingers to the brim of his hat as if they were passing one another on a London street corner.  
  
Hilda nods, “Gentleman.”  
  
The assistant -- Gilbert? -- looks between Jean and Hilda questioningly. “I'm quite all right,” Jean says, hastily. “It was just a loose bit of earth; Miss Pierce saved damage to my stockings, that’s all.” She swallows the disappointment back down, shaken by how nearly they’d been caught. If she hadn’t hesitated--  
  
“I find a brisk walk does wonders for the mind,” Hilda says firmly. “And Dr McBrien was kind enough to join me. Shall we see you at dinner this evening?”  
  
“I heard about the car,” Dr Palgrave says. “Bad luck.”  
  
“Not at all,” Hilda says. “It has given me an invaluable chance to review the excellent work being done here by Dr McBrien and her colleagues.” Jean is, perhaps the only one who realizes the look on Hilda’s face is a swallowed smile. She is also likely the only one who’s noticed how Hilda leans on _Doctor_ for the second time in this brief conversation. She feels her lips twitch despite her disappointment.  
  
After a few moments of inconsequential niceties, Dr Palgrave and his companion -- _Gerald_ , she remembers now, Gerald Elton -- take their leave and continue on the path in the direction that Hilda and Jean have just come. The illusion of privacy, briefly shared, beneath the canopy of bare branches and stubborn autumn leaves has been shattered. Jean and Hilda continue on their way side by side without touching, the silence between them slightly strained -- but not unpleasantly so. Jean is acutely aware, as she had been earlier in the day, of Hilda’s body in relation to her own, of her own desire to reach out and make contact. Yet it is somehow, in the strange logic of wanting, less of a strain to stop herself from doing so when she knows the touch would not be rejected out of hand.


	3. Act Three

Dinner that evening turns out to be a rushed affair, eaten in shifts while they work at deciphering the latest batch of intercepted cables. Around half six, Jean and Hilda walk together from the computers’ outbuilding to the ball room that's been converted to a dining hall for the masses; once there, Hilda is quickly ushered from Jean's side to a seat at the head table, where the Men of Importance (Jean knows they think of themselves in such capital letters) sit. Hilda casts an arch look over her shoulder at Jean, but allows herself to be seated nonetheless to Major Shurtleff’s left. 

Jean eats her own meal with practiced efficiency, then returns to her work with a detour to the dormitory wing. In her bedroom, she retrieves a few necessaries from the chest of drawers and clears the bedside table for Hilda’s use. The bed has been freshly made up, she notes, and her own pyjamas removed from beneath the pillows. She finds them neatly folded over the back of the chair by the bureau and is just rolling everything into a need bundle to take back to her office when she hears Susan's voice in the hall saying “...just up here to the left,” and then there’s Hilda standing in the door. 

“Oh, Jean,” Susan says around Hilda’s shoulder, “I was just showing Miss Pierce -”

“Don’t mind me,” Jean says hurriedly, “I was just collecting a few things.” But she can see Hilda’s gaze sweep around her spartan room, the few personal effects pushed neatly to one side atop the dresser so as to leave room for Hilda’s case. “Is there anything we can get you? There's a fresh towel just there --” she nods to the chair where the maid has left a washcloth and towel, “-- and the washroom's just up the hall. You'll have passed it on the way up.” 

“This is your room?” Hilda asks; a question yet not a question.

“You are the guest,” Jean points out. “And we'll no doubt be working late. They’ve made me up a cot in the dormitory.”

“I see,” Hilda says, gravely. She turns to Susan and says, “Thank you, Miss Phillips, I shan’t keep you from you work any longer.” It’s a clear -- though courteous -- dismissal. 

Susan glances at Jean who nods, “I'll be right over,” Jean says. “And we’ll go over the bit of cypher you were showing me just before the dinner bell.”Susan nods and turns, footsteps retreating down the hall.

“You do realize that, at this juncture, your night’s sleep is of critical importance for the war effort?” Hilda says when they are alone, Jean standing awkwardly in the middle of her own bedroom and Hilda in the door.

“I’ve Miss Fletchers bed down the hall with the rest of the girls,” Jean points out. “We’ll be working late.”

Hilda moves away from the door toward the center of the room. “No doubt,” she says. “I hear that my driver, Stevens, has been accommodated there as well.” Mrs Frederickson must have spoken with her, then, or relayed the information via Susan. “I must say, it is always a pleasure to spend a night away from London.” The last comes out with a nearly-concealed sigh.

“The air-raids?”

“Nightly, in recent weeks,” Hilda sets her case down on the foot of the bed. 

“Shall I...?” Jean isn't quite sure what she intends to ask, only that she is reluctant to take her leave. She had meant to be clear away before Hilda took occupancy and now all she can think about is Hilda's soft hair against her own pillows, the faint scent of amber and rose that must be her perfume lingering after she has gone.

“...leave you to settle in?” she finishes, as if she’s hosting a house party. She hears her mother's voice in her words and winces. 

Hilda laughs, not unkindly. “Get yourself back to the girls; I'm able to look after myself.” 

“Of course.” Jean reddens, ducking out into the hall. She knows when she’s been dismissed. In the same polite tone Hilda had used moments before to send Susan on her way. Perhaps she had mistaken their earlier conversation, presumed too much. Perhaps she has only heard what she wanted to hear.


	4. Act Four

Hilda stands at the foot of Jean’s bed, listening to the sound of Jean’s footsteps as she retreats down the stair. She smooths the palm of her hand over the worn brass knob at the bottom corner of the bedstead and considers how unexpected her situation has become.

The day had begun many hours ago in London, Stevens picking her up outside the front door of the building where she lived in a flat with two other women who worked in government positions. She knew what they did; they did not know what she did. Such was the asymmetry in much of Hilda’s life. Molly and Agnes might worry about her when she failed to return to the flat tonight, but more likely they would assume she had remained at the office. It was not unusual for her to be gone several days in a row -- though usually it meant a few snatched hours of sleep on a convenient bench with her coat bunched up under her head, not a room like this: neat, spare, but also warm and ... welcoming, she thinks.

 _Homey_. A perilous thought.

She looks around the room once more, seeing Jean even in her absence. The faded wallpaper, with what had once been a pattern of yellow, climbing roses. The wardrobe that Jean has left ajar in her haste, the blackout curtains neatly pulled, the tidy assemblage of items on the dresser below the mirror: a comb, a brush, a small tin of hairpins, a bottle of perfume. A small framed photograph stands on the dresser: Jean’s parents, Hilda presumes at a glance, from the age and resemblance. Mr McBrien -- Graham McBrien, she remembers, from Jean’s personnel file -- is holding a small pug dog under one arm, his wife’s gaze on him rather than on the camera lens.

Hilda forces herself to let go of the anchoring bedstead and take a step, then two, across to the bureau. She ghosts a hand over the personal effects, not admitting to herself that there is no professional purpose for her curiosity. Jean’s record is unimpeachable, the department she heads a watertight and steady ship. It isn’t the need for closer oversight or the pressure of an internal investigation that keeps bringing Hilda back to Bletchley. She could delegate at least a half, perhaps even more, of her routine visits to others. But for the past several months, now, she has quietly ensured that Jean’s reports are put on her desk, and often there is a detail or two she can justify to her superiors requires clarification of the face-to-face sort. Questions too complex to put in writing, explanations too classified to give over the telephone.

Standing in the bedroom now, Hilda can smell the faint echo of Jean’s perfume -- a scent that Hilda has long suspected, and confirms with an inward smile as she picks up the small cut glass bottle on the dresser, is in fact a gentleman’s cologne. It reminds Hilda of the stiff sea breeze off the coast of Aberdeenshire, where the North Sea breaks with unrelenting strength against the high cliffs and flat sandy beaches are now strewn with tangles of barbed wire, watchtowers, and patrols. She remembers playing on the St. Andrews’ sands with her nanny as a child, collecting shells and driftwood and the bleached bones of seabirds and fish, picked clean by crabs and the outgoing tide.

Hilda sets the bottle of cologne back down with a gentle _chink_ of glass against polished wood. She avoids looking at herself in the mirror; she knows what she looks like: too tall, too angular. Severe, her governess used to say: _“Smile, Hilda, don't look so severe!”_ Her hair is going grey long before its time, as it has for all of the women in her family. _Mannish_ is what the girls at school whispered behind her back. Gawky and bookish with a laugh that made the other girls cringe. It had seemed inevitable that she would remain a solitary individual, whether in the mission field or (as it turned out) in the war office.

She’s never been ... wistful about alternatives to that seemingly inevitable fate. Until now.

She retreats from the dresser, because standing there -- as Jean must, every morning, to pin up her beautiful hair -- suddenly feels like a violation of Jean’s privacy. The only alternative, though, is the bed. She sits on the edge of the mattress and slides her feet out of her worn pumps with a sigh. She hadn’t intended walking through wet fields when she dressed that morning and her weak ankle is protesting.

The room has the sort of creeping chill familiar to Hilda from the drafty dormitories of her youth. She should burrow under the woolen blankets before her body loses the heat of the evening meal. This wing of the cavernous house is nearly silent, but for the wind that is whistling slightly as it forces its way around the window panes. She can see the heavy drapes wavering slightly and feel the draft across her stocking-clad feet.

At school as a girl, on cold winter nights, they used to bundle up two to a narrow bed, huddled together for warmth. Hilda closes her eyes against the sudden memory -- Edith’s warmth tucked in against her chest, Edith’s icy toes gradually warming against Hilda’s calves. She hasn’t shared a bed like that in decades. But something about the room makes the bed feel empty without Jean.

Well, there’s nothing to be gained by further delay, she thinks to herself briskly with a little shake of her head. She reaches up to unbutton the grey tweed jacket that she put on in predawn light. She shrugs out of the jacket and begins the same task with her blouse. It’s one of her better blouses, purchased just before clothes rationing had begun. She had been aware of her motivations in selecting it that morning, standing before the open wardrobe door. Not that she had been able to successfully imagine any scenario whereby Jean would be the one undoing these buttons rather than Hilda herself. Hilda’s imagination has never been particularly inventive in this area, which is part of why -- she assumes -- she has never moved beyond the schoolgirl innocence of sharing a bed. She is skillful at observation and stage direction, at knowing when to give a nudge here or drop a name there, but has always found it difficult to insert _herself_ into the drama.

Still, that morning she had selected the cream blouse with its delicate mother-of-pearl buttons and thought about Jean’s deft hands undoing them, how close they would have to stand for her to do so, and what they might do after.

She stands up so that she may unhook and step out of the tweed skirt that matches the jacket. She folds the skirt over the back of the single chair which wobbles with one leg on and three legs off the worn carpet, then hangs her blouse and jacket over that so the fabric won’t crumple overnight. She glances around, feeling somewhat flat-footed by the lack of toiletries, but wraps one of the wool blankets folded at the end of the bed around her shoulders and makes a quick journey to the ladies’ at the end of the hall. There, she runs a damp cloth over her face, rinses her mouth, and uses the toilet before returning to the bedroom and crawling beneath the comforting weight of the top sheet, quilt, and additional blanket. She has one more analysis brief to read before she has completed all the work she'd brought with her for the day, but that’s best done while warming up the bed for the night. She settles her reading glasses on her nose and pulls the manila envelope out of her briefcase with a sigh.

The bed warms more quickly than Hilda had feared, and the sheaf of papers she is reading through feels unaccountably heavy in her hands. Bletchley Park may be a crucial hub of wartime operations, but it is an oasis of calm and quiet compared to London. Due to that problem with one of the petrol lines in the automobile she’d been assigned, she’s found herself on something of a brief, stolen holiday -- and, however briefly, it feels possible to lay some of her burdens down. On page thirty-two of the seventy-odd page report, she realizes that she hasn’t taken in any of the information detailed in the paragraph swimming before her eyes. So she finally admits defeat and puts the report and her reading glasses on the bedside table. Switching out the electric light, plunges the room into near-total darkness, broken only by the faint light from the bottom of the stairwell filtering in through the door she has, out of habit, left unlatched in case of evacuation. Precious seconds not wasted fumbling with doorknobs in the dark could save lives in the midst of an air raid.

"Sufficient unto the day," Hilda murmurs to herself, as she sinks back against Jean's pillows and imagines Jean's arms around her as she drifts off to sleep.


	5. Act Five

Hilda has become a light sleeper during seemingly endless years of war. She isn’t even sure she’s fully asleep before the soft murmur of women’s voices and the domestic sounds of evening ablutions drag at the edge of her awareness. It’s comforting, the sound. She thinks, perhaps, she can pick out Jean’s alto, a soft laugh as she responds to a phrase or two in sharp soprano.

Hilda is just sinking back into slightly deeper slumber when there’s a sharp _crack!_ and a chorus of surprised yelps from down the hall that yank her into full wakefulness with a shock of adrenaline. She’s on her feet before she realizes what she’s doing, pulling the blanket-shawl more firmly around her shoulders and stumbling out into the hall in the direction of the sound.

She comes to a halt, blinking, in the comparatively harsh light of the long gabled room that is serving as the women’s dormitory. A tidy row of beds, interspersed with wardrobes and footlockers, run down each side of the room. At the far end the room’s occupants, in dressing gowns and pyjamas, are standing around something on the floor that -- when they look up as one in response to Hilda’s appearance -- Hilda sees is a military-issue cot with one end collapsed.

"It’s alright, it’s alright -- I’m so sorry to have woken you," Jean says, turning toward Hilda. "A leg’s broken, somehow."

"Screw’s loose," Stevens says, pushing herself up from where she and another girl had knelt to examine the damage. “And it looks like a knot in the wood. Idiots. Never should have let it out of the factory.”

Hilda reflexively pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, distracted by the way Jean has pulled her hair down from its daytime coil and braided into a long, soft rope that swings forward as she bends down to examine the damage.

“We’ll have to go for another cot,” one of the other women says.

“No, don't wake the staff,” Jean says. “They'll be up before dawn as it is. I'll --”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Hilda interrupts before she can think too carefully about what she is saying. “Your own bed is right down the hall and big enough for two.”

She pulls the wool blanket more tightly around her shoulders and attempts to give Jean the look she aims at subordinates who challenge her authority. Jean straightens and visibly buys time by considering the jumble of bedclothes that cover the remains of the cot frame.

There’s silence while the room defers to Jean for a response. Hilda ignores the pulse in her own throat and watches Jean’s lips as she draws in a breath.

“Alright. Alright then," she says, almost irritably, after a pause. Avoiding Hilda’s eyes she leans down again to pick up the pillow from the wildly tilting head of the cot. “Someone help me tidy this up before one of you breaks a leg on the way to the loo. And then it’s to bed, all of you, before the breakfast bell rings and we’re back to work again.”

“Yes ma’am,” the redhead murmurs, with a mock salute. Jean rolls her eyes.

Hilda hovers, feels herself to be hovering, in the doorway as the Bletchley women bustle about in concert, clearing away the remains of the cot. Perhaps she should retreat ahead of Jean to the bedroom? But that feels somehow awkward. Now that Jean will be sleeping there, too, it seems as if Hilda should wait to be re-invited.

“Go on, then,” Jean is suddenly there before her, close enough for Hilda to see the shadows of long days and disrupted nights in the lines around her mouth and eyes. She’s making a shooing motion with the hand not holding the spare pillow. Hilda backs up and stumbles on the uneven door lintel. Jean puts out a hand to steady her in a gesture that reminds Hilda of their moment in the wood. Jean won’t meet her eye, though, as they continue their awkward dance out into the corridor. Perhaps Hilda has overstepped and Jean is just too tired to argue. Hilda pulls the blanket close and steels herself for a sleepless night keeping strictly to one edge of the bed.

Jean marches down the hall like a prefect making her rounds and Hilda trails after her feeling somehow chastened. Perhaps she’s just tired, not as awake as she thinks she is. Hilda has never been a particularly imaginative dreamer and often wakes from tangled reprisals of her student days. Perhaps that explains why, in this moment, she feels closer to fourteen than forty. Perhaps she’s somehow made everything worse. Perhaps she should have stayed in bed and let the Bletchley women sort the broken cot situation our amongst themselves.

She’s forgotten that the bedroom will be dark, that she hadn’t stopped to switch on the light. But the open doorway casts an elongated rectangle of light into the center of the room, the slash of white sheets where Hilda had flung back the bedclothes at the sound of splintering wood.

“I'll take the inside,” Jean says, briskly. “Unless you have a preference...?” She follows her own words with action, crossing the room and crawling into the bed with the soft shuff of sheets pushed aside and the creak of bedsprings.

Hilda swallows, feeling the weight of Jean’s presence deep in her belly. “No, that’s...whichever you prefer.”

Jean still isn’t meeting her gaze and in the dim light from behind Hilda’s shoulder -- a light that is switched off by one of the other women down the hall as Hilda responds, leaving Hilda unable to read Jean’s face for cues on how to proceed. Except, of course, that somewhere down below there’s a clock chiming half eleven and Jean’s made it clear that sleep is a priority. In the near-total darkness she gingerly shuffles across the floor until her toes are on worn carpeting. And then a few steps more and her outstretched hand makes contact with the brass rail at the foot of the bed just in time to keep her from stubbing a toe in the dark.

Under her hand on the rail she feels Jean’s weight shifting across the bed, hears the drag of flannel and worn cotten. Tries not to wonder whether Jean is wearing any additional layers beneath her pyjamas. She pulls her hand back from the brass as if she’s touched a hot kettle, and rubs her palm down the side of her slip in the dark.

“Find your way?” Jean asks, low, from the direction of the pillows. “I can turn the light on if--?”

‘No, that -- no, I’ve found --” Hilda moves along the side of the bed until the quilts under her fingertips give way to the pillows she’d been propped up against, reading, earlier in the evening. There’s nothing for it, so she turns and folds her knees to sit on the edge of the bed, then pulls up her feet and slides under the sheet and blankets where the residual warmth of her own occupancy is now tangled with the distracting closeness of Jean. The bed really isn’t big enough for two grown women, and she can tell from the places where they touch that Jean is lying on her side, back to the wall, facing Hilda. Her knee presses against the side of Hilda’s thigh, the side of Hilda’s arm brushes against Jean’s wrist. Hilda closes her eyes as if even in the dark she can shut out thoughts of the heavy weight of Jean;s breasts, the fall of her soft hair against the pillows where it tickles Hilda’s cheek. 

Jean had meant to sleep alone tonight. Hilda should have no expectations.

"Are you warm enough?" Jean asks, her breath warm against Hilda’s neck.

Hilda has no ready response to the question. _Yes. No. Come closer. You're too close._ She feels herself in danger of rapidly overheating, yet can also feel the beginnings of a tremor that might be gooseflesh breaking out over her skin. Perhaps she’s caught a fever. Although she felt perfectly well when she woke in her own bed eighteen, twenty hours before. She remembers the predawn darkness of the previous morning, her bedroom that had felt spartan empty compared to this bedroom now so full of ... full of ...

“Hilda.” Jean’s words are a warm exhale against Hilda's cheek. So close. A statement, not a question. And then there’s a soft rustle of cloth, a tug and lift of the bedclothes, and Jean’s warm hand is a settling weight on Hilda’s breastbone.


	6. Act Six

Jean’s touch is light and careful, though not tentative. Nevertheless, Hilda feels breathless from it, as if the wind’s been knocked out of her. She opens her eyes and then shuts them again. Perhaps even in the dark keeping her eyes shut will help her ignore extraneous information, allow her to sift through the noise and understand some underlying truth.

She’s aware of her own chest rising -- one breath -- and falling -- another breath -- beneath Jean’s touch. Hilda moves her own right hand up to her chest, hesitantly, as if she were trying not to startle a suspicious cat. It’s a surprisingly erotic motion, dragging her hand up along the length of her own thigh, hip, fingertips grazing at the rough curls beneath worn satin. The dip of her own navel. The curve of her ribs. The rise of her small breast beneath her own wrist as her fingertips find the unfamiliar angle of Jean’s forearm, the bump of her wrist bone, the chapped skin across the back of her hand. They’re … tangled together, entwined now, so that Hilda feels Jean’s arm tense as if to pull back in retreat. She clamps her own fingers around Jean’s wrist: _No. Stay._

Hilda has always wondered how two people make their desire for one another known. Perhaps this is how: a breath, a caress, a response. When it’s clear that Jean won’t pull away, Hilda relaxes her grip and slides her hand down the length of Jean's forearm and back again. Then down once more, pushing Jean’s pyjama sleeve back so she can dip her fingers into the warm crook of Jean’s elbow, then drag the tips of her fingers up to the soft underside of Jean’s arm, wrist, the hidden curve of her palm. She can feel Jean’s pulse fluttering beneath her fingers. She repeats the motion -- down the length of Jean’s forearm -- and tugs, gently, at Jean’s elbow. She wants Jean even closer. Jean comes willingly, falling against Hilda’s body with a soft, surprised exhale that’s somewhere between a laugh and a moan.

Hilda turns her face toward the sound and suddenly they’re kissing: a soft brush of her lips against Jean’s, the curve of Jean’s mouth as she smiles against Hilda’s skin. _Yes. This._ This is what might have happened between them in the woods that afternoon, if Palgrave and Elton hadn’t come along.

Men, always getting in the way at just the wrong moment.

But there is no one to interrupt them now. Even as Hilda is thinking how grateful she is that they are alone, Jean presses even closer with a tiny hungry noise that drives all further thought of men or anything but Jean from Hilda’s mind. She shifts on the bed, aware that Jean’s hand has shifted from her breastbone to the swell of Hilda’s meagre breast, that she's pressing and smoothing and squeezing in a way Hilda would have imagined to be painful if she'd imagined it at all. But it isn't, not the least bit painful. In fact it's quite delicious and she feels a greedy sound building in the back of her throat as she struggles for more. More kisses, more touching, more of Jean’s weight against her, more of Jean’s thigh wedged tight and high between her own.

She’s pushing herself against Jean, there, Hilda realizes with a flush of embarrassment. Rocking against the solid press of Jean’s thigh in the same way she pushes up against her own hand. _Mons, vulva, clitoris_ \-- she knows the scientific terminology from her grandfather’s medical texts, knows the physiology of arousal and climax. She wonders if Jean has done this with others -- her confidence suggests that she has -- and wonders if Jean can feel the same building tightness, the same frustrated yearning, that Hilda feels pooling deep inside.

Hilda realizes that she’s clutching at the flannel of Jean’s pyjama top and scrabbles, momentarily, for the hem, before pushing her fingers up under, making contact with overheated skin at the small of Jean’s back. Jean groans with approval, her own hot fingers digging into Hilda’s flesh, the muscles of her thighs and buttocks clenching as she presses her now-exposed belly tight to Hilda’s hip. She breaks away from Hilda's mouth and buries her face in Hilda’s shoulder, whimpering with a needy frustration that Hilda fully understands.

“May I --” Hilda tries, breathless, tugging ineffectually at the drawstring of Jean’s pyjama bottoms.

“Please, _please_ \--” Jean fumbles between them, and for a brief moment all four of their hands are fumbling with the knot until Jean can shove the cloth down over her hips. Hilda feels the brush of coarse curls against the back of her hand, and a smear of warm damp, before Jean is pushing her away and tugging at Hilda’s slip, yanking it up over her hips, and grunting in momentary frustration until Hilda lifts herself up off the mattress just enough so that Jean can drag the offending garment over her head and fling it to the floor.

The bedroom is still cold, but Hilda no longer cares because Jean is shockingly warm against her, her naked belly pressed to Hilda's side, their legs entangled. Jean's fingers, then her mouth, are back at Hilda's breast in a way Hilda has never understood could be so deliciously harsh, painful but urgently wanted. And then Jean’s fingers are between Hilda’s legs and she’s humming in satisfaction against Hilda’s skin as she tongues and nips at Hilda’s nipple with her teeth and slips first one finger, then two, deeper than Hilda’s own fingers have ever been able to go.

Hilda pushes up into the welcome intrusion and bites the inside of her cheek, aware that even with the door closed the noise she wants to make would be inadvisable. Instead she makes do with burying her fingers in the hair at the nape of Jean’s neck: Don't stop.

Jean seems to understand the instruction because she _hmmms_ again, lips and tongue not breaking contact with Hilda’s nipple, and works her fingers, slippery now, in and out, in and out, pulling back -- and then before Hilda can complain about the hollow emptiness she leaves behind, pushing back in with what feels like three, maybe four fingers. Hilda wants _more_ , even though she can feel how full she already is, and arches her back as she pushes herself down against Jean’s wrist, growling in frustration at the limitations of her own body.

“Greedy,” Jean whispers into the dark, lifting her lips from Hilda’s breast. She pulls her hand all the way back and -- once again, before Hilda has time to mourn the loss -- pushes herself up over Hilda’s thighs and straddles her. Hilda reaches up without thinking to steady Jean’s hips and as Jean leans down for a kiss she feels Jean’s damp curls pressed against her belly. Hilda lifts her own hips to meet Jean in a rolling motion that Jean must approve of because she moans deep in the back of her throat as she nips and nuzzles her way down Hilda’s throat.

Hilda wishes, suddenly, for a light. She wants to see what Jean looks like from this perspective, hair pulled awry and tumbling dark around her face, pyjama front half unbuttoned, the curve of her breasts just visible to Hilda pinned below her. Hilda pushes her hands up over the curve of Jean’s hips as Jean sinks even closer, shoves the flannel as far up as she can, then tugs in hopes the pyjama top will just come off.

Jean laughs, softly, against Hilda’s mouth. “Darling,” she says, with a tone of wonder Hilda wishes to hear again, and again. “Here.” Jean lifts herself up, pressing her naked arse down against Hilda’s thighs even as she escapes Hilda’s touch. There’s the _shuff_ of movement, and eddy of air, and then Jean is back gloriously, utterly naked against Hilda: belly to belly, breast to breast, her nipples hard against Hilda’s own.

“What do you want?” Jean asks, lips against the shell of Hilda’s ear. “What do you like?”

Hilda wordlessly shakes her head. Anything, everything. “Please.”

Before she had slipped into this bed with Jean, Hilda could have said very precisely the steps it took for her to reach orgasm. In a very unmissionary-like manner, she is intimately familiar with her own physical pleasure and has never worried, particularly, that such activities were counter-indicated by God. But this, with Jean, this is something more wild, much less contained, much less _efficient_ than the pleasure she is acquainted with. This business of someone else's heat, someone else’s wants, is so much more unpredictable -- and therefore so much more exciting -- than her usual routine.

“May I...?” She asks, fumbling a hand between them, turning her wrist, and there -- she feels her lips open in an almost-silent gasp -- there is Jean’s heat, her vulva full and heavy beneath Hilda’s fingers, the length and nub of her clitoris swollen and hard between Hilda’s fingers. And then, as Hilda reaches and Jean pushes forward -- teeth hard against Hilda’s shoulder to stifle a moan -- Hilda’s forefinger and middle finger slide inside. She’s _inside_ and suddenly Jean is her whole awareness: the sharp press of Jean’s teeth painful against skin and bone, Jean wet against her hand and wrist and belly, Jean soft -- so soft -- deep inside, her muscles contracting around Hilda’s fingers, hips shoving forward with the same urgency Hilda had felt with Jean inside her moments before. _More. Deeper. Wider._ Hilda fumbles -- the angle is awkward, her hand turned outward at her belly, wrist trapped between Jean’s thighs -- and manages to work her ring finger in to join the first two. She feels the line of Jean’s clit against her thumb, its hooded nub nestled against the pad, her palm cupped firm against the unyielding bone of Jean’s pelvis.

She marvels at the textures against her fingers: the soft-hard sponge of flesh, the hollowed-out emptiness at the tips of her fingers, the pucker that must be Jean’s cervix slippery against her fingers as Jean urges her deeper. She’s seen diagrams -- knows how the female body is arranged -- but never been so intimate with her own interior as she is now with Jean’s. She feels every slide and curl of her own fingers as if Jean is back inside her, caressing her there, even though Jean’s hands are clenched in the pillows, bracketing Hilda’s shoulders as she supports her own weight. Hilda can feel the way Jean pulls in upon herself, is increasingly absorbed in finding and taking her own pleasure: her breath coming faster, with tiny effortful noises, as she works herself against Hilda’s hand. And then, just as Hilda is starting to wonder whether it would be possible to shift Jean off her aching wrist, Jean’s whole body seizes, back arching and thighs clamping tight, tighter, tighter, around Hilda’s arm as if she’ll never let Hilda go, never release her back to herself -- and in this moment Hilda would have it no other way, would be grateful to remain just where she is, a part of Jean, wherever she goes, forever -- and they’re caught up together in a moment of perfect, suspended silence.

Jean holds herself still -- so utterly still -- for one second, three seconds, five seconds, more -- and then she releases herself, a shiver of muscles, and a slow collapse against Hilda’s side, head coming to rest against Hilda’s pillow, now-boneless hand curled -- tenderly, almost possessively, Hilda thinks -- across Hilda's chest and against the side of her throat. Hilda is aware of her own pulse, there, beating fast beneath the skin Jean brushes with the tips of her skilfull fingers. The world feels reduced to the rush in her own ears, the skim of Jean’s breath against her cheek, the press of Jean’s fingers, and the tight coil of wanting restlessness that makes her hips want to lift up in search of Jean.

She wonders what the etiquette of this situation is. Should she make her desires known? Take matters into her own hands? She knows enough from the talk of other women to gather that their needs aren’t always met, as it were. Perhaps Jean imagines she has come already? But before she can worry further, or formulate some plan of action, she feels Jean’s hand drag slowly, heavily, down from the base of her throat, between her breasts, over her belly, and back between her thighs. With a sigh Hilda spreads her legs to receive her.

“Yes, just like that,” Jean murmurs approvingly. And her fingers find Hilda’s clitoris and start a slow, steady circling.

It is like, and unlike, when Hilda touches herself. Her own hands feel strangely ... unoccupied, given the pleasure coiling deep in her belly. She twists her hand into the tangled bed sheets, thoroughly disarranged by their activities, and smooths her other hand down Jean’s back, careful not to scratch until Jean nips at her earlobe. “You don't have to be gentle,” she whispers against Hilda’s temple.

“Neither do you,” Hilda whispers back, allowing herself to push up against Jean’s hand. “Harder. _Please_ \--” Jean presses down, almost roughly, fingers too much and not enough at the same time. Hilda struggles to get away and aches for Jean to be closer, closer, close-- and then, suddenly, she’s reached the precipice: her body that pulls tight with a single long reach _toward_ ... toward whatever it is she’s been chasing, that pleasure, familiar yet newly intimate to be sharing with another: sweaty, naked, limbs tangled together, the bed in disarray, clothing flung across the cold floor to be collected the following morning.

When she’s wrung out, boneless, back against the pillows, she’s vaguely aware of Jean in her arms -- _Jean, in her arms_ \-- fumbling with the bedclothes. Hilda’s still running hot from exertion but knows it won’t last, can already feel the chill of the room creeping back into her awareness.

“Would you -- should we -- ?” She tries, then clears her throat. “Would you like me to retrieve your pyjamas?”

“You cannot even find your limbs yet, darling,” Jean says, with affection, and now Hilda will never be able to hear another “Miss Pierce” from Jean’s lips without mourning that she isn’t saying _darling_. “Let me cover us, and we’ll cope with the rest come morning.” With that she appears to have arranged the blankets to her own satisfaction, for she sinks back against Hilda’s breast -- nestling in against Hilda’s shoulder as if she had never slept anywhere else -- and cocoons them both in the warmth of cotton and wool and skin against skin. Hilda thinks of her room in London, of slipping between cold sheets the following night, and swallows back disappointment that this night cannot be the first of every night hereafter.

Perhaps, she thinks as she drifts off to sleep, perhaps she can convince the right people that more regular visits to Bletchley are absolutely essential to the war effort. She turns her face and presses a kiss to Jean’s brow. Jean’s hand on Hilda's breast twitches slightly in response, holding on tighter.

Yes, absolutely essential, Hilda thinks. They will find a way.


End file.
